Zhishuang

Brief history of fashion in pictures. This is a very useful tool, equivalent to a guide, convenient for me to do more in-depth research.

When I was researching tailoring information, I found a website in which many pictures introduce fashion timeline. This is a good resource for me to intuitively see the clothes of which era you like, so that I can conduct further research according to that era.

Because the film is set in 16th century England. In the Middle Ages, there was a 500-year witch hunt in Europe that reached its peak between 1450 and 1750. Women’s breasts were then seen as a symbol of seduction of men, which is the characteristics of a witch! All good women must keep their breasts flat and well concealed. In the film, the two female protagonists wear British court dress with the chest tucked flat.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• Elizabeth

Elizabeth is a 1998 British biographical period drama film directed by Shekhar Kapur and written by Michael Hirst. The film is based on the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, where she is elevated to the throne after the death of her half-sister Mary I of England, who had imprisoned her. As her early years continue, she faces plots and threats to take her down.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a 2007 biographicalperiod drama film directed by Shekhar Kapur and produced by Universal Picturesand Working Title Films. It stars Cate Blanchett in the title role and is a fairly fictionalised portrayal of events during the later part of the reign of Elizabeth I, following up on Kapur’s 1998 film Elizabeth, also starring Blanchett.

In this film, Elizabeth’s appearance changes a lot. Not only are the costumes varied, but the hairstyles and jewelries are also amazing.

• Gunpowder, Treason & Plot

Gunpowder, Treason & Plot is a 2004 BBC miniseries based upon the lives of Mary, Queen of Scots and her son James VI of Scotland. The writer Jimmy McGovern tells the story behind the Gunpowder Plot in two parts, each centred on one of the monarchs.

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon and filmed in Romania with a Scottish crew, the first film dramatizes the relationship between Mary (Clémence Poésy) and her third husband, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell (Kevin McKidd). 

• The Young Victoria

The Young Victoria is a 2009 British period drama film directed by Jean-Marc Vallée and written by Julian Fellowes, based on the early life and reign of Queen Victoria, and her marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Congratulations on a beautiful jacket in the making. Your hard work and very good skill are evident throughout and your efforts to keep up with the demos is impressive. The jacket can benefit further from a nice press with a damp press cloth to tame the gabardine. The lapels are nicely padstitched and the shaping through the fronts with canvas and wool working together is very pleasing. You might want to consider further cupping of the lapels as you work on future jackets to get even more shaping. The lining and facing look expertly set and show a very good understanding of the process. The collar has been well drafted and as you padstitch remember to hold in a shape to further make it come to life. Keep up the great momentum and very good work!

• Tutor told me when the pocket was done, it should be in this way.

Through this unit of learning, I have learned a lot. The most important thing for me is to discover a problem I never realized before: I don’t know how to develop fabrics. Because I use to study fashion design, in order to complete the design, I need to do a lot of jobs: research, extended drawing, fabric manipulation, draping, pattern cutting, final illustration etc. Because I did not learn drawing from a young age, so I was not good at it. But I have always been confident in my handmade ability. I can quickly make a corresponding fabric based on inspiration. As many new sources of inspiration as I can make as many new fabrics. When I came to Chelsea and entered the specialism rotation stage, I realized that I had a serious problem. There was nothing else I needed to do besides the fabric at this moment. I was forced to face this problem and found that what I used to be most proud of covered my blind spot.

• If only give me one inspiration, I don’t know how to further develop it after I make the first fabric manipulation. When I told tutor about this problem in stitch rotation and I couldn’t help to be anxious. Because I don’t know how to quickly applied what the tutor told me. Later, during the holiday, I looked for a lot of information to see, and I slowly understood what the tutor meant. Although I am not particularly satisfied with these stitch samples, I have try my best to further develop them.
• I combined elements of shells, Cottages, and maid outfits from previous research. Based on cottage drawing, borrowing the shape of the shell and the black-white color of the maid outfit to complete these fabric manipulation in three rotations. Some fabrics have also added red color, because this black girl committed suicide afterwards. Two pieces of fabric in Stitch rotation were made from a bird’s eye view from the roof of cottage. I prefer my knit and weave outcomes to stitch.
• Because I used to know some basic skills of knitting machine, I spent a lot of time doing experiments to achieve the graphics and fabrics I wanted. Our tutor told us we should integrate the techniques we have learnt, not just simply knitting a piece of fabric. Later, I spent a few more days researching new methods that combined the elements of cottage, shells, and maid outfits and recorded procedures in technical book. The final outcomes are that you can see the black-white color of the maid outfit, the shape of the shell, and the tassels of cottage from each piece of fabric. Some fabrics also incorporate bloody red.
• I’m very excited about Weave rotation at the beginning of the first week. But the pattern was limited to 8 small squares, no matter what interesting graphics I designed, there was no obvious effect. On the weekend I feel a little bit boring about the fixed pattern. So I learn some hand-weave techniques from library and online videos. The works completed in the second week are all knitted by hand on the table loom.

Specialism rotation at this phase is so important to me. Thanks to tutors for letting me discover my serious problem that I have not realized for a long time. Face the problem to solve it. I also try everything to overcome the problem, whether by asking the tutor, going to the library, or learning online. My fabric manipulation skills, especially the design development ideas, have been greatly inspired and improved.

The object is a large scale sculpture composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of aluminum bottle caps sourced from local alcohol recycling stations and bound together with copper wire. Looking at it from a distance, it will give you the illusion that it is a soft cloth, and when you approach it, you will find that it is composed of thousands of small aluminum sheets. Such materials, while seemingly stiff and sturdy, are actually free and flexible, which often helps with manipulation when installing it. 

El Anatsui is the designer of these kind of metal sheets. He is a sculptor from Ghana who currently lives and works in Nigeria. He transforms simple, everyday materials into striking large-scale installations. The bottle-top hangings are handmade. You could see the traces of many hands, but none is the artist’s—with craftsmen and assistants completing essential parts. Anatsui tells the them what formats and colors he wants them to make. They select the tops they need, cut and tear them apart, and shape elements that they then wire together—or “couple”—with precut lengths of copper wire. Later, Anatsui will take loads of pictures, consider the layout on the computer and then rearrange them.

Anatsui hasn’t just turned something discarded into something beautiful. The use of these kind of materials hint at broader topics such as global consumerism and its history, including slavery. 

“I saw the bottle caps as relating to the history of Africa in the sense that when the earliest group of Europeans came to trade, they brought along rum originally from the West Indies that then went to Europe and finally to Africa as three legs of the triangular trip…The drink caps that I use are not made in Europe; they are all made in Nigeria, but they symbolize bringing together the histories of these two continents.”
The New Razzle Dazzle, Art News

Anatsui wanted to “draw connections between consumption, waste, and the environment”. His metal sheets have become famous as a kind of recycling, but he does not see his activity as recycling in the usual sense—as an effort to clean up the land, to return a material to usefulness, or to avoid expending new resources. Like any artist, he chooses his material because they meet his aesthetic and symbolic criteria, they suit the way he wants to work. In art history they learned that in the cave, they painted on the cave wall, or did engravings on the walls. It means that you do art with whatever is around you. Although Anatsui did not adopt his materials in order to save the Earth, he is deeply concerned with the environment and wants his works to reflect those feelings. After the cloth phase ended in 2007, his titles increasingly touched on those concerns.

When Anatsui graduated from Kumasi, in 1969, post-independence African nationalism and cultural activism were in full swing. The ideology of indigenization embraced by artists was urgent and demanded African content and the use of local materials, implicitly those of indigenous rural life. in his trays of the early 1970s, Anatsui became one of the earliest of many West African artists to apply an African medium and process. From the’80s onwards, artists are culturally confident and became less concerned with anchoring their identity in the postcolonial nation. Instead, they think for the most part in terms of their own practices as individuals who live and work in a particular locale, yet are part of a larger global community. 

Anatsui is well-known for the metal sheets. His latest bout of intense experimentation occurred in 2005-6, when, turning inward to develop his bottle-top medium and process, he developed dozens of ways to shape the aluminum disk and cylinder, opening up a seeming infinitude of ways to use them expressively. His bottle-top sculptures do not generally step out onto the floor but has a crucial relationship with the wall, on which it relies for support. It is just a decorative object and no functional use. He leaves the metal sheets open and encourages the works to take new forms every time they are installed. 

A Western art critic has said that Anatsui’s bottle tops could be compared to “Duchamp‘s bicycle wheel” and “recall disparate Modernist sweet spots without quite settling into any familiar category.”

We could find deep meanings in the media Anatsui has chosen: they are sourced from his immediate environment, they have been put to intense human use. They are thought to have lost value. They are ignored, discarded or thrown away. They all have something to do with food consumption. To him, their provenance imbues or charges them with history and content, which he seek to explore in order to highlight certain conditions of mankind’s existence, as well as his relationship with himself and the environment. He therefore try to bring these objects back, to present them again in ways which seem to make them confront their former lives and the lives of those who have used them.When I learned about Anatsui’s life and many years of art making, I deeply felt that social changes of the times have profoundly affected the artist. Especially when you come from one country, your work will often be labeled as representing that country. Even if the meaning you want to convey through the work is not limited to your country, the audience would feel that your work bears the brand of this country. I remember that when I saw an artwork, I would easily fall into the stereotype of that artist. After knowing Anatsui, I needed to correct my inertial thinking. When I appreciate an artwork, I should first think about what is my subjective feelings are, and then understand the artist’s creative intentions.

Museum Visiting

The museum of London

Tate Mordern

Reading List

Shari Tishman (2018) Slow looking : the art and practice of learning through observation, New York: Routledge.
Vogel, Susan Mullin; Anatsui, El, 1944- Works. (2012) El Anatsui : art and life, : Munich ; Prestel.

• 

It really takes a long time to finish them.

• 

• 

• 

I feel a little bit boring about the fixed pattern. So I learn some hand-weave techniques from library and online videos:

• 

• 

•